1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic spraying device for farm animals and wherein the animals are sprayed automatically when passing through a defined passageway.
2. Description of Prior Art
Various devices are known to spray animals with a disinfectant or insecticide liquid so as to kill various types of flies that lodge themselves in the hair or skin of the animals. However, many of these treatments are not totally effective for the reason that they do not provide complete spraying of the animals and often these treatments are given in feed areas where the insecticide will also be sprayed within the feedstock of the animal. Thus, some of these chemicals can find their way, for example, in the milk of cows and the milk has to be discarded. Also, most spraying devices are constructed for occasional use only when livestock is found to contain infectuous flies.
Experiments have also proven that if cows are bothered by flies during grazing, the flies will affect the rate at which they graze and the cows will produce 5 to 20% less milk than if they are not bothered by flies. The spraying of farm animals with hand-held devices has also proven to be time-consuming and often the livestock is not sprayed uniformly. Various animal-operated sprayers have been devised in an attempt to solve these problems and such are, for example, described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,884,192; 3,183,890; 4,580,529 and 4,478,176. All of these Patents describe devices with various mechanisms that trigger automatic spraying of animals. The present invention relates to such devices and attempts to solve their various deficiencies.